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20000921: LWTOA3 image data missing from Unidata-Wisconsin datastream (cont.)

>From: Thomas Don Aratari <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Michigan

Tom,

>Yes, that was me last night that downloaded the new ldm-mcidas. 
>
>Thanks for getting back to me. I am the contact here, so if you could put
>that in your "contact" list, that would be helpfull. 

You are already in the original contact list: the combination of our
ldm-users, gembud, and mcidas-x email lists.  If you did not receive
the notifications about the datastream change, then we need to either
update your email address in the ldm-users list, or find out why you
didn't receive the messages (I know that they did not bounce back to
Unidata, because I monitor the bounced mail log files that we maintain
to make sure that people are getting the notifications).

As far as the individual site contact list, I generated that from a
combination of the list of sites whose LDM statistics reporting is
operational (so we can see that they are getting the MCIDAS feed) and
those who are seen to have not downloaded the ldm-mcidas release.  This
turns to to have been a fairly large consumer of time, so I would
rather not have to do it routinely.  Our preferred way of communicating
with users on datastream/LDM issues is for them to be subscribed to
ldm-users.

The reason that you did not receive a personal email about the change
was that there are more than one department receiving Unidata-Wisconsin
data at the University of Michigan.  I saw ldm-mcidas downloads from
UM, but I had no way of knowing that one of the departments (you) did
not do the download.

>Have a question tho. First off, my logs keep telling me that ROUTE.SYS is
>not found, do I have to setup an env. variable for this so it can find it?

ROUTE.SYS needs to be copied from the 'etc' directory of the binary
distribution ('src/decode' directory of the source distribution renamed
from route.sys to ROUTE.SYS) to the directory in which you want to
decode images.  You should do the same with the file SYSKEY.TAB.  Both
of these files must be readable and writable by the user running the
LDM.

>I know its in the etc of the ldm-mcidas release. 

Copy it and SYSKEY.TAB to the directory into which you want to decode
the images.  Make sure that its file permissions are as I indicate
above.

>Also, we had several scripts decoding the old mcidas data into sat
>imgages, we used the AREA015? AREA014? formats to convert into wxp. Any
>way to get this naming convention out of the new feed?

This naming convention is preserved by use of the McIDAS routing table
concepts.  As soon as you copy ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB to the output
data directory, you should once again have images with the names you
are used to.

If you were not using the McIDAS routing table previously (and you note
tells me that you were not), and you start using it now, you will start
storing more images than you did previously.  The default for the
LWTOA3 method with no routing table was to store four each of the
GOES-East/West IR, VIS, WV, floaters, Antarctic composites, etc., and
six of the MDR (Manually Digitized Radar) products (AREA files
AREA020?).  The routing table is setup to save ten of each kind of
product, so you may have to adjust your scripts to reflect that
change.

Last comment:  You say that you had several scripts decoding the old
mcidas data into images and then you mention a conversion to WXP.  I
have been finding out from old WXP users that they were using a program
provided with WXP called 'mc2area'.  This program took the LWTOA3
images and depacketized them, but they did not turn them into their
native AREA file form; they were left as delta-encoded (compressed)
products.  If you were also doing this, then you will find that the new
AREA file products will be larger than the other products you were used
to using.  If you were using the ldm-mcidas 'lwtoa3' decoder and not
the WXP 'mc2area' converter, you will not run into this possibly
unexpected change.

Please let me know if/when I can be of further help in getting your
image use back to normal.

Tom